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This guide is intended to educate you in the basics of web development. It focuses on three technologies that
are widely used in the market today: HTML, Java™, and Java™Server Pages. In this guide you will find numerous examples of working
code relating to the three technologies mentioned above with complete explanations of each, in depth commentary on the topics covered, and several screen shots to help illustrate those topics.
Before getting started, let's talk a little bit about the three technologies covered and why we chose them
as the focus of our guide:
HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language, is the staple of web development. The reason for this: virtually every
page on the web has some HTML code contained within it. Thus, we can't talk about web development without talking about HTML, and you
can't become a good web developer without knowing HTML. HTML is the code responsible for displaying information on your
web page. Font types, font sizes, colors, and graphics displayed on a page are all the result of HTML code.
Java is a high-level, object-oriented programming language that is very popular with web developers. It is often used to perform
server-side programming tasks such as looking up information in a database or talking to other servers. It can also be used
to build Java Applets, which are Java programs that are run by a web browser. Java is the programming
language used by JavaServer Pages, one of the most popular technologies for creating dynamic web pages.
JavaServer Pages, or JSP for short, are used together with HTML to create dynamic, robust web pages. Web pages can be generated using
HTML alone, but are static in nature.
Using JSP allows you to introduce dynamic content in your web pages and gives you the power of a high-level programming
language, Java, in conjunction with HTML. What this means is that you can do virtually anything in a JSP page that
can be done with the Java language. For example, you can perform such actions as retrieving information from databases,
talking to other servers, writing your own encryption code, etc. The possibilities are endless.
Why did we choose these three technologies for our guide? Well, in the case of HTML, we didn't have a choice.
There's really no way to write a web development guide without including HTML. However, our choice of
JSP, and its programming language Java, could be debated. There are other technologies on the market today that
can be used for web development. What makes JSP and Java better than those technologies? We answer this question in the
next paragraph.
One reason: popularity. Java is quickly becoming the most popular programming language in the world, if it isn't already.
JSP, which uses the Java programming language, is also on the fast track to becoming popular. With popularity comes
vendor support. There are numerous vendors on the market today with products that allow you to utilize JSP and Java
technology. In fact, the products we use in this tutorial to produce JSP and Java code are free. Java and JSP are also
platform independent. This means you can write a JSP page and run it on a UNIX platform, and then without making any changes,
run that same JSP page on a Windows platform. Most other web development technologies cannot achieve this feat, especially
JSP's main competitor, ASP from Microsoft, which can only be run on Microsoft platforms. This makes JSP and Java very attractive
to large companies that run many different platforms, which in turn means more jobs for JSP developers.. To recap, it seems that Java and JSP
have a lot going for them. They are popular. They can be learned using products that are free, which is a big plus
for the beginning web developer. There are numerous vendors supporting them. They are platform independent. There are many
jobs on the market for JSP developers. A better question to ask earlier may have been, why would we talk about anything
other than Java and JSP?
Now that we've given some information on the technologies we chose and the reasons for choosing them, it's time
to get started with the guide. The first four sections of the guide cover installing and testing everything you need
to be able to produce and execute Java and JSP code. Then, we give a comprehensive guide to learning HTML. After you've completed
this, we'll tell you everything you need to know to be a Java programmer, followed by teaching you how to write JSP's. At this
point, we will take what you've learned about HTML, Java, and JSP and take it to the next level by creating web pages that
utilize all three technolgies. Finally, after we've
covered everything you need to be a web developer, we will walk you through a sample application, which
takes all that you've learned and applies it to a real-world example. It's going to be a long road, so let's get started now.
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